Going Backward.

But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear, but walked in the counsels and in the imagination of their evil heart, and went backward, and not forward.
Jeremiah 7:24. 

When that still small special voice

tells you not to make a choice,

and you make it anyway --

it is bound to ruin your day.

Going backwards, you can't win

with your actions steeped in sin.

Like Macbeth's imagination,

it may start as mere flirtation;

but when ears are disinclined

to accept God's words refined

there is only grief and pain

(though the world some fools might gain.)

Help me, Lord, go forward to

all that's glorified and true!

so long as it was built tall and fast and had people living in it.

(From a news story by Connor Dougherty. @ConorDougherty  NYT)

I call it Tissue Towers, and all thirty-nine stories are built out of repurposed kleenex. It took me only thirty-nine days to build. And rent is only thirty-nine dollars a month. All three-hundred-and-ninety units were rented out within a week of our Grand Opening.

It began as a dream during a closed meeting of the Feral Falls town council, of which I was the tassel coordinator. Not a very glamorous job, admittedly, but one that required me to sleep through most meetings as silently as possible. After all, my uncle is still listed as Missing In Action in Luxembourg. 

Bill Humberstone it was, who got me thinking. He said, during that fateful meeting: "People are getting taller and heavier; my sons are a half foot taller than me and each one weighs more than a fullback -- and they eat like one, too. Something's gotta be done."
Then Morty Sambal chimed in: "Yeah. This idea of shrinking rooms until there's no place to turn around is nuts. Why did the zoning board pass that ordinance anyway?"
Now it was John Wetmack's turn: "Oh, you know those guys. They're drunk with power and want the Munchkin vote."
At this point Sarah Rexburg broke in: "Remember how much room there used to be outside? That's all going away now, because of social media."
And then I fell into a deep slumber and dreamed a dream:

In my dream I was in the middle of a large field full of trashy weeds and splintered apple crates. Broken glass glittered on the ground. Small black bugs scuttled around; when they ran into each other they fought until one devoured the other. It was a hellish landscape; I was uncomfortable with it, so I called out for help.

A large scroll seemed to descend from the skies and unfurl before me. It was the blueprint of a sleek apartment skyscraper. At the bottom, in big gold letters, it said: "Build Ye With Haste Out Of All Waste."

I awoke with a start. The closed meeting was over, so I was all alone in the council room. Feverishly I went to the whiteboard and drew as much of my dream blueprint as I could remember. And there it was -- the cure for smaller rooms and the shrinking outdoors. Large spacious apartments, with beautiful views of the rolling pine groves, the twining lilac terraces, and the immaculate fields of capers. The formula for turning used tissues into steel and concrete and glass came to me in a flash. I wrote it down on the cuff of my shirt, then hurried off to see the newspaper editor, who was a friend of mine since the Maple Syrup Riots. 

"It's a damfool project" he told me when I had finished narrating my dream to him. "You'll have contractors and neighborhood watch organizations up in arms -- and wait until the Governor hears about it! He'll send in the National Guard."
"But" I insisted, "it's completely feasible and won't cost more than the price of repaving a parking lot. You can see how much this is needed, can't you?"
"Yes, but . . . " the editor tapped his Ticonderoga #2 pencil against his chin in deep thought. I waited patiently. A flugelhorn sounded in the distance, announcing the arrival of another glyptodon. They were becoming a nuisance, I thought to myself.

"Won't work" he finally said. "What happens when it rains? The whole shebang will melt into lumpy sludge."
I smiled at him. "You know it hasn't rained in ten years" I reminded him. "And your paper predicts the drought will continue for at least another ten years."
"Yes" he admitted, "that's so."
"All I need is some seed money to get this off the ground, and in just over a month I'll have cheap rooms available so big that you can play footvolley in them!" I looked at him expectantly. I knew the paper had oodles of money, just laying around, ready to be invested.

"Well . . . " he began. "It's been a good year for the paper. Lots of people dying from flu and titanic acne, so we're getting a lot of paid obituaries. That's where the real money is, y'know."
"How much you charging now for an obit" I asked out of curiosity.
"Ten-thousand each" he said, a rapacious grin pasted on his face.
"Wow!" I replied. I took a deep breath, and went for it. "How about your paper financing my dream?"
"Okay" he said, without batting an eye. "I'll have my secretary write you a check for fifty-thousand now, and another fifty next week."

Naturally I reserved the penthouse at Tissue Towers for myself. From its dizzying heights I drop paper bags filled with glyptodon musk on unsuspecting pedestrians far below. Anyone hit by one of my bags who bothers to come up to complain to me is automatically offered a job at the newspaper -- which now not only charges a fortune for printing obituaries but also charges a huge weekly fee for not delivering the newspaper at all. Since most people no longer want anything to do with the manufacture of newsprint, the profits from that particular gambit are obscene. So they hire people just to sit around and write scripts for a new Austin Powers movie. 
This is why America works so well, and Russia is nothing but a head cold. 

Pride and Craftiness

. . .  and that he might pull down, by the word of God, all the pride and craftiness and all the contentions which were among his people . . . 
Alma 4:19

Nothing pulls down man's facade

quicker than the word of God.

Pride cannot withstand the speech

of those who minister and preach.

The crafty find their schemes undone

when offered mercy from the Son.

And contention my heart leaves

when the scriptures it receives.

Give me doctrine, sound and pure,

and all things I may yet endure!

Radio Sputnik. Rootin' for Putin.

In January, Radio Sputnik, a propaganda arm of the Russian government, started broadcasting on three Kansas City-area radio stations during prime drive times, even sharing one frequency with a station rooted in the city’s historic jazz district.

Neil MacFarquhar.  NYT. 

In the heartland bobolinks

sing along with Russian finks.

Stations greedy for some cash

air a bunch of Moscow trash --

Putin is a nifty guy;

he would never use a spy.

All the Russians are our friends;

and this hogwash never ends.

Talking heads trash Uncle Sam,

and they never give a damn

that such turncoat sophistry

tarnishes democracy.

Sputnik pays a handsome chunk

to the stations (nickname: Skunk.)

Money talks, and it says "Da!"

"We will air your phony blah."

It's free speech, I guess you'd say.

Still, to have the Ruskies pay

Americans to reprimand

sears them with the Quisling brand.

I suppose that Fu Manchu

stands next in this broadcasting queue.

And so our airwaves soon will throb

with a Chinese hatchet job!

Stiffnecked

Yea, and this was not all; they were a stiffnecked people, insomuch that they could not be governed by the law nor justice, save it were to their destruction.
Helaman 5:3

Am I ever justified

with a neck that's petrified?

Or a brazen brow so thick

it is like a solid brick?

Stubborn and contrary, too,

law and justice I eschew.

Renegade in heart and soul;

only Christ can make me whole.

Place my feet upon the path

that avoids thy awful wrath!

Else destruction I espy

coming for me by and by!

The Fates of Jonathan Kravis, Aaron S.J. Zelinsky, Adam C. Jed, and Michael J. Marando.

In the annals of the law

these four will ever stand,

as models of brave rectitude

and fundamentals grand.

Kravis and Zelinsky, 

Mr. Jed, and Marando --

Integrity embodied;

they have struck a ringing blow!

They truckled not, these heroes,

when their D-O-J exec

demanded their compliance

to on Justice place a check.

Disdaining all ambition

and defying rigid fate,

these four resigned the case en mass --

they had to play it straight!

From Olympus thunder came:

"These pipsqueaks must be birched!"

"They've made a mock of my decrees,

and my great name besmirched!"

Poor Kravis was denied a spot

in any firm of lawyers;

he now sells candy by the box

in arena foyers.

Zelinsky was demoted

and is notary on-call;

he sits on wooden benches,

sadly waiting in the hall.

Mr. Jed was hounded 

out of town and now resides

in London as a mudlark,

always waiting for low tides.

And Michael J. Marando,

with a stoicism firm,

stays unemployed, subsisting

on skim milk and raw wheat germ.

These famous four forevermore

will fill our hearts with pride.

We'll build their statues in the park

and have them purple dyed.

And when the times are troubled

to our children we will quote:

"Remember how they lost their jobs,

so do not rock the boat!"

Photo Essay: Distant Mountain.

02/12/2020

Distant mountain;

a noncommittal

monument.

02/11/2020

The mountain

accepts my admiration

with indifference.

02/10/2020

Scrapping

the sky clean

of despair.

We don't have to be alike to love alike.

President Russell M. Nelson

“We don’t have to be alike or look alike to have love for each other. We don’t even have to agree with each other to love each other.”

President Russell M. Nelson

O school me, Lord, in caring more

for those I sometimes do abhor.

The stranger and exotic guest;

help me to show them all my best.

For thou hast been misunderstood;

accused of bad when doing good.

So I must strive to drive away

all thoughts that from compassion stray!

Excerpt From My New Memoir, 'None of Your Beeswax': Making Up the News at KRCQ Radio in Detroit Lakes.

Recently divorced, I was working as a bill collector in St Paul and was desperate to get out of the Cities and do something less stressful. I usually spent nine months a year as a circus clown, but that year the divorce proceedings had put a spanner in the works as far as traveling with a mud show. So I fell back on my other career, radio news. I had a bona fide certificate from Brown Institute of Broadcasting, so I decided to put it to use.

 I got the job as news director at KRCQ up in Detroit Lakes mostly because I didn’t baulk at the miniscule salary. The janitor at the station made more than me. (Well, the janitor was the station owner’s wife . . . ) My broadcast name was Tim Roberts. You can still find it in old copies of the Fargo Forum . . . 

The owner had only one caveat for me -- ten minutes of fresh local news every day, no matter what. During the summer this was easy -- the town was swarming with tourists and their shenanigans. The police blotter was chock-a-block with juicy items. 

But come winter, when all the tourists skedaddled back home, local news became as scarce as snowflakes in the Sahara. 

I distinctly recall one desperate morning in February, when all I could scare up was a missing manhole cover on Main Street. That was my lead story -- everything else was recycled, rehashed, and stale. The station owner grimly informed me that if this turn of events continued, I would soon be out of work. I was even stealing all the lost pet announcements from the dj’s to use as news bulletins.

So I went to my favorite bar and began to think . . . and drink. Around midnight an idea penetrated my sozzled brain. I would just have to invent stories. When I sobered up the next morning, that is exactly what I did.

Some of the ones I still remember include the Pelican Rapids farmer who discovered an elephant skeleton in an old barn, and how he planned to donate it to the Children’s Museum in St Paul. Then there was an old state law in North Dakota that prohibited bringing pennies into the state from Minnesota. Something to do with Depression era economics. Meteorological records indicated that northwestern Minnesota had become fifty percent more humid in the past one hundred years due to the influx of railroad lines. And an evangelical pastor in Ogema raffled off tickets to raise money for a new church roof -- the winner would get a front pew seat in the chapel when the Rapture occurred (and the pastor knew the exact date and time.)

As I became more creative with my faux news I also felt more certain I would soon get caught out -- which, in turn, led to serious drinking sessions every night to subdue the anxiety and guilt.

I finally did get caught, when WCCO radio down in Minneapolis called the station to ask about a story I had run about a man who was involved in a lumberjack accident -- my report stated that his head had been accidentally chopped off and was being kept alive in a jar at the Bell Museum at the University of Minnesota. After a brief interview with the owner I was on my way back to life of a bill collector -- the only job an incipient alcoholic like me could get at the time.

I finally sobered up after several years in AA, and finally went back to the circus, first as a clown, then as Ringmaster, and I ended my circus career as publicity director -- a job that required a great deal of exaggeration and ballyhoo -- something I had already prepared for back in Detroit Lakes.

**************************

An email response from a reporter up in Minnesota:

Reinan, John	Tue, Feb 4, 2:57 PM (8 days ago)
to me

Tim, thanks for this note. I appreciate your sharing your story – it is not the kind of career path one hears about every day!!

I grew up in Fergus Falls, but left town after my HS grad in 1976, so I never had the chance to hear your *fascinating* news stories on KRCQ! But I’m very familiar with DL and the general area.

My first newspaper job was in Little Rock, Ark. Some of the old-timers told me that back in the day, they made up a character named Omo Fevers Bartlett, and they’d insert him into the paper occasionally on a slow day. Omo Fevers Bartlett led Arkadelphia State Teachers College to gridiron glory, or Omo Fevers Bartlett had developed a new type of cattle prod. I thought this was the greatest thing I ever heard, and the next day I quoted Omo Fevers Bartlett in a story about the state of the economy. My editor kindly but firmly informed me that we didn’t pull that kind of stunt anymore, thereby possibly saving my career.

The Westminster Homeless Show. (Prose Poem)

this year's show features many fascinating breeds:
bag ladies come in several categories --
mumbling
crying
staggering
wooden
homeless vets are a popular breed with the media.
but they are not as gregarious as 
strung out addicts.
teenage runaways must answer to their handler's voice 
on the first command
or be disqualified 
from further competition.
for the first time this year the Westminster Homeless Show
admitted breeds living in their cars. 
but only if they don't have any shower facilities nearby.
all homeless males without scraggly beards have been ruled ineligible for entry this year.
Herding shopping carts will again be the main event on both days.
a new category this year is homeless children.
as long as they're housebroken.
the entry fee has gone up this year:
a whole bag of prunes from any local food shelf.
welfare agencies are reminded to keep their homeless people
on leashes for the duration of the exhibition.
this year's grand prize winner will receive a lifetime supply 
of flea powder.